The Progress Paradox
How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
By Gregg Easterbrook
Random House
HC, 376 pg. US$25.95/C$37.95
ISBN: 0-6794-6303-8

A problem with prosperity?

By Steven Martinovichweb posted January 12, 2004

With The
Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse,
Gregg Easterbrook asks a very interesting question: Why, in this time of
unparalleled prosperity and personal freedom, do people in the West seem
increasingly disenchanted with their lives? By nearly every statistical measure
Americans and their counterparts in Europe are enjoying the fruits of many
generations of labour and yet, Easterbrook argues, we seem dissatisfied with
our lives, increasingly telling pollsters that we expect life to get worse.

"Arriving at this moment, your great-great-grandparents would be surrounded
by people who take for granted circumstances our ancestors would view as
astonishing progress in the ancient quest to banish privation and establish
a Gold Age. But even if the arrow of progress points toward an even better
life, unhappiness persists and is wholly real regardless of whether our recent
forebears might find it unbelievable that anyone could be unhappy in an air
conditioned house with a refrigerator crammed with food and ambulances on
call."

Easterbrook devotes the first third of The Progress Paradox to arguing that
things are indeed better. The explosion of wealth, he argues, has primarily
benefited the middle class, a group that now individually and collectively
own assets that would have been barely dreamed of a generation ago. Although
the rich have gotten richer, so has everyone else for the most part. The
size of the average home has increased markedly, we work less and have more
leisure time, live longer, are smarter, eat better and to excess in many
cases, have access to the best health care in the world -- even if you don't
have medical insurance. Without exaggeration, in many ways the average American
lives better than the royalty of past eras.

As the second third of the book relates, however, this material wealth hasn't
translated into overwhelming feelings of contentment. Polling data suggests
that most people are about as happy as they were five decades ago while millions
of others suffer anxiety and depression. Instead of being pleased about our
larger homes, better food and superb health care, many of us are instead
despondent because we believe things can't get any better, or worse, we can
lose it all. We feel pressure to not only keep up with the new standards
that the Joneses have set, we need to surpass them, spawning the type of
home that has a DVD player in almost every room. Of course, as Easterbrook
points out, these are problems that billions would gladly accept.

Unfortunately at a certain point The Progress Paradox loses its way and
never recovers. Although Easterbrook works hard to prove the rich Western
world is suffering an epidemic of depression, research has shown that it
is the poor of the Third World who are more likely to suffer. He admits that
no long-term, cross-sectional studies have been undertaken to study whether
depression has really increased over the past few decades. While claiming
that unipolar depression has increased tenfold since the end of the Second
World War, he concedes that the author of the most compelling study has shown "only" a
two or three times increase, seriously undercutting his argument.

It only goes downhill from there during the last third of the book. Although
he tacitly accepts the free market as the best economic system to date, he
dreams of a world where capitalism is superceded by a new economic system
that delivers greater economic equality. He objects to "extreme" wealth
because it violates a "sense of justice." He agrees that a doctor
should make more than a garbage man, but asks if that doctor should make
so much more? Why shouldn't successful people be satisfied with "psychic
income" -- things like respect and status -- instead of fighting to
add another zero on their paycheque? At times you can clearly sense that
Easterbrook seems not to understand the fundamental role of the market.

After spending an entire book complaining about universal health care, minimum
wage and greed -- not to mention his well-known hatred of SUVs -- it shouldn't
be a surprise to find out that Easterbook thinks we can make ourselves happier
by moving on these fronts. He urges Americans to call for higher prices,
a voluntary self-tax as it were, to support a higher minimum wage -- forgetting
perhaps that higher prices will effectively negate the increase and increase
unemployment -- what he calls a "living wage." The United States
should work to create a universal health care system, ignoring the problems
that nations like Canada and Great Britain are facing. Greed at the top,
represented by CEOs and upper management, should be tackled by making sure
they don't earn too much, though what that means is left up to the reader
to decide. If that agenda doesn't seem too relevant to the problems Easterbrook
has chronicled, don't worry, he also wants you to participate in a global
campaign to eradicate poverty.

The Progress Paradox does raise some interesting questions: Why aren't we
happier? Why do many of us ignore the bright side of life in favor of minor
problems? Is being happy simply a matter of learning how? Unfortunately Easterbrook
doesn't provide us with any real answers, preferring instead to advance an
unrelated political agenda. If unhappiness is really an aspect of ever-increasing
prosperity, Easterbrook doesn't seem interested in finding out. Though he
is right in arguing that we need to adopt a more positive view of humanity,
it's hard to see why we need bigger government for that to come about.